Topic: The Truth About Movies

Open on a Los Angeles highway. Cars parked. People looking rather annoyed. Just at the right moment cue the first of two dozen songs intermixed into this two hour movie. It’s clear to me that musicals aren’t for everyone. People go to the movies to be blown away with action sequences or riddled with fear. The problem is that these genres have fallen into creative lulls. While good action movies still exist, they are becoming less frequent by the moment (see any list of sequels coming out in 2017). What La La Land and its director Damien Chazelle have reminded us, is that good movies do exist if you’re willing to take risks and put yourself out there. Continue...

​I live roughly three miles from three local movie theaters. The one still showing Spotlight is the oldest and smallest Among them. My drive home lasts all of ten minutes and it wasn’t until I was about one minute from home that I realized I was griping my steering wheel furiously and there was no music playing through the stereo in my car. I had driven home in silence, digesting what I had just seen. Continue...

​In 2014 the stage was set. Leonardo DiCaprio had won Best Actor in a Motion Picture Musical or Comedy at the Golden Globes and all he had to do was hold off the front runner for a few more lengths. The Wolf Of Wall Street was all the rage during January and Leo could smell the highest prize in acting. As February began, like a well trained horse coming off the final turn, Matthew McConaughey caught fire and it became clear that Dallas Buyers Club would clean up the acting awards on the men’s side at the 86th Academy Awards. Continue...

Call it an unpopular opinion. In fact, based on the definition of the word, it might be one of the least popular opinions in movie history. Want to see how unpopular it is? Here we go: Three billion four hundred fifty-nine million four hundred fifteen thousand eight hundred eight dollars. That insane number is what the last 11 Marvel films have grossed at the box office. This number leaves out the work Sony did with Spiderman (another $1,578,707,099) over the last decade. Continue...

Now that the awards season has come to an end, we can start looking forward to huge summer blockbusters and indie films that slipped through the cracks of 2014 and find themselves on the early slate for 2015. To make this a little easier, we are now going to include the trailers themselves in our breakdown! Continue...

It’s been four years since a movie truly dazzled me. Dazzled me the way movies are meant to. They’re meant to draw you into a world that is nothing like your own, then, teach you, amaze you or frighten you, the way only the best actors and actresses can. I remember sitting down to watch The Kings Speech and being floored. Colin Firth delivered in a role that was inconceivably awkward and Geoffrey Rush matched him step for step. Continue...

When I saw the trailer for Foxcatcher a few months ago, there was a light in my eye. There’s nothing I love more than a gritty drama based on a true story. Add in some premiere actors and a solid director and you have the makings for a potential run at the Academy Awards. Instead of lining up for awards this winter, Foxcatcher was wildly disappointing on almost every level. Continue...

Last night I was out at a bar having the type of conversation that all but guarantees there won’t be an attractive person within earshot. It was full of words like ‘X-Wing,’ ‘lightsaber,’ and of course ‘Millennium Falcon.’ Needless to say, the entire bar went about their business while me and my fellow nerds debated the merits of the new Star Wars trailer. Continue...

Psychotic. That was the first word that came out of my mouth after exiting the theater, over two-and-a-half hours after Gone Girl began. Psychotic in a way that I imagine only a handful of people can truly understand. In fact, I’d go as far as to say that if you ever meet someone who says they totally understood the characters in Gone Girl, you should run…for your life. Continue...